


What We Talk About When We Talk About 'What Angels Don't Talk About'

by LadyFlorenceCrayeCraye



Series: Jeeves and The Better Angels of Our Nature [1]
Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Multi, Period Typical Attitudes, neurosyphilis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 11:39:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7933189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyFlorenceCrayeCraye/pseuds/LadyFlorenceCrayeCraye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some concepts simply do not belong within the cheery world of Wooster. These are a series of cut scenes and perspectives from some of the characters Bertie encounters in "Where Angels Rush In", which fit within that story but don't actually belong in it. Each chapter is from a different character's perspective/ POV. Some things are not quite PG enough for Wodehouse, especially poor old Madeline's chapter. Unlike "A Dictionary of the Language of the Angels" this only really makes sense, if you read it alongside the other fics in the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Catsmeat and Freddie: whatever it was you were looking for

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bertie Wooster and Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright endeavour to cheer up Freddie Threepwood, whose beloved is engaged to one Rupert Psmith.

**At a low and garish nightclub:**

“I say old man,” says Freddie Threepwood, shouting above the sound of Kit Carrington's All-Star Band playing the Hoochie Coochie Choo-Choo like men who have made a largish wager on bringing down the wall of Jericho before the night is ended, “I've given it some thought and don't you think 'Eve' sounds rather like air coming out of a tire?”

“What's that?” says Catsmeat.

“I said 'I say old man, don't you think Eve is the sound a tire makes when it's sprung a puncture?' If you say it slowly I mean”

“Who the devil is is Niamh?”

“Eve! The girl I … oh never mind. Oh dash it! Eve Halliday! The girl I'm in love with. The girl that louse Psmith stole out from under my own roof. The girl whose name is like the sighing of angels. That Eve, you blot.”

“What on earth was a girl doing on your roof? Had she got stuck up there? Why didn't you fetch her down?”

“Under my roof, not on top of it. She was cataloging the library.”

Catsmeat slings an arm around the younger man's shoulder.

“Buck up old bean. That platinum blonde doing the bombshell bit in the bottle-green evening gown over there goes by the name of Eunice Dalton. Her friend in the red and gold, is Berenice. We were all in rep together in Birmingham. Smashing girls, each of a modern and obliging disposish. Eunice too has been let down none too gently by the ones she has loved … well I was going to say more times than she could count, but that would be ungallant, for the number is a largish one and poor girl has never been terribly good at arithmetic... let us say, on rather more than one occasion. She has made it a policy not to be discouraged. I am quite certain, that if I were to effect an introduction you might have much to discuss...”

“That's dashed white of you, Catsmeat.”

“Shall wander over there together? I can effect the introductions, then perhaps the four of us can head back to my digs. Kit Carrington puts forth his best efforts, but we might be in want of something rather cosier to end the night on.”

“What about Bertie? Doesn't he get a girl?”

“My dear fellow, say that any louder and you'll spook the poor boy!”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing! Nothing. Only... I think our mutual friend might be of the artistic temperament.”

“Oh. He's not on the stage too is he?”

“Bertie! No, Bertie couldn't open a church bazaar without fluffing his lines and falling over his feet, let alone manage a six-week run at the Lyceum. What I mean to say is, he remains immune to the fairer sex.”

“You don't mean to tell me he's queer?”

“I'm not sure I'd go that far.”

“I think you think he's queer!”

“Well dearie I'm just an old thesp not a magistrate, so it hardly matters what I think. You meet more than a few of them in my profession and they're all right, or a lot of them are anyway. And Bertie Wooster's a fine fellow whatever he is.”

“Yes but, all the same, it's not... well, I mean to say, it's not exactly the normal thing, is it?”

“On that we can agree, my good man. But shush now. Be the very model of discretion... Hallo Bertie, old chap, we were just discussing you. Did you find whatever it was you were looking for?”


	2. Dahlia Travers: and to always endeavour do the right thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aunt Dahlia has lunch with her nephew Bertie Wooster at Harridges and enlists him to steal a silver cow creamer.

Did she do her best by him?, she wonders. 

Her brother died young, when you come to think about it. His wife died with him. Terrible blow, what. 

He hadn't seemed that young at the time, because he was her big brother. Not her biggest brother, but fairly big. Her biggest brother also died. No children. And so that silly boy Bertie was left richer than Croesus and the only sensible thing he ever did with all that money was to hire Jeeves – who ought to have been running some major branch of government or some minor overseas colony somewhere – just to iron out the creases in his trousers. 

But then one year she had overtaken him. That is to say, as is customary, she became one year older, while her big brother (not her biggest brother, but still pretty biggish), as is also customary, stayed several years dead. 

Her biggest brother stayed dead too, of course, as did her youngest brother. Brothers have a tendency to once they fall into the habit of it. Well alright; the trait is not exclusive to brothers. The dead stay dead and the living keep on living.

Until they don't. 

Just like that – years after the coffin had first entered the ground and years after she had stood looking at those two little orphans, saying treacherously, but only in her head 'please God, not to Angela, don't do it to her; You've let it happen to them, in Your wisdom, Lord, if it must and it's too late to reconsider now, I suppose; but let it never happen to her, just at least let one of us stick around to keep an eye on her; God You are an Insufferable Blot, oh Lord' – it turned out that her brother had died young. 

Now his older girl was out in India, married and spawning. Great-nieces running about beneath the shadows the pagodas. No, that was the other place. Beneath the shadows of the pavilions. 

Well shadows are shadows. 

And his boy... well. 

Did she do her best by him?

While her nephew was growing up, she'd had no son of her own. Not of Bertie's own age anyway. Bonzo was born after her brothers died. Only ever met one and a half out of four of his uncles. Rather a strange thought that. 

The half being her poor mad brother, of course, who was really not her brother at all by that stage. Dementia, followed by general paralysis of the insane, culminating in death. Agatha thinks it is a hereditary instability of the nerves; well, he'd certainly caught it somewhere. 

Some things are better left unsaid. 

Silly boy, he'd been the baby of the family. 

George is alright though. Alive and kicking. Fatter than a stuffed tick. Nice to see him married. No chance of children... his wife being rather past all that. Maudie the barmaid, back after all these years! Strewth. 

(As it happens she rather likes the old girl. She knows how to mix a cocktail.) 

Can you imagine – in good time, in good time, not yet, please Lord, not yet, for I shouldn't want to lose the complete set of brothers just yet – that funny child Bertie Wooster as Lord Yaxley, sitting in the Upper House at Westminster? Gawd help us all. 

She took him in whenever he was home from school for the holidays. A lovely boy. She hadn't realised just how lovely, until her own son Bonzo grew old enough to serve as an exemplar of the unloveliness of typical specimen. Well his mother loves him! 

(She does actually; she really, really does). 

But Bertie! Always trying to do the right thing; so worried he might hurt someone's feelings, that he might upset the balance of things. 

Not a sissy precisely... well no. Not a sissy. 

At least: Angela was always a rough and tumble sort of girl. They egged each other on. Well, truthfully even a mother can admit that it was Angela who did most of the egging. But it never took much with Bertie. He was easily egged. 

Still is, silly boy. 

For a while she'd agreed with her sister Agatha. What that boy needs is a wife. Someone to look after him. Take him in hand. Fish him out of the soup. 

Agatha had never been easily egged. Even as a child. Never been easily anything. There was a lot to be said for old Agatha. She ought to have been born a man. She would have made a good Field Marshall in the last War. 

But her sister had picked a losing battle in this instance. Any fool could see that. 

Did she do her best by him? 

Look. She's not naïve. She's not a schoolgirl. 

(Whoever coined that phrase had never met the girls she used to know in Fifth Form; had never played in an inter-house hockey match; had never met her daughter Angela or her sister Agatha at that age on a dark night, like Spring-Heeled Jack in pigtails; had never delivered an address to an all girls' school while afflicted with a lisp, an astigmatism or a toupee). 

They sit, her nephew and she, in Harridges chewing the fat and swapping badinage. He is dressed like he's hankering after a season in panto. In that get up, even the greasiest of agents would have said 10% is not nearly enough to induce him to consider inflicting such a noxious blight upon the public. Consider it a public service, they would have said. Consider it theology; evidence for the argument that even theatrical agents have souls. 

Would her nephew like to be on the stage?

He sings rather nicely, but he's terribly shy in his way. Strange boy. 

Agatha would scream! If she thought any of us might be at risk of going on the stage, she would scream. 

A sister's curse notwithstanding, she's always rather fancied the thought of dancing the dance of the seven veils... 

Well Tom might like it any roads.

Look. She's not naïve. She's wondered if her nephew's man might do a little more than just help him in and out of the old dinner jacket. 

It's not exactly unheard of. It has been known to happen. 

Did she do her best by him? 

Maybe they do go to bed together. Him and his valet. 

She's not naïve. She doesn't need to know how it happens, to know it can happen (well, she can guess how it might happen). 

Would it make him happy? 

Agatha says, he needs to find a wife and let himself be molded. 

Agatha doesn't know what she says. She should have been born a man. She's that unobservant. 

Did she do her best by him?

Look. Alright. She's guilty. She knows she would have shot her brother dead if it meant that her own daughter Angela (or Bonzo, but he came along later) would get a mother's love for even another month and a half, or another hour and a half, or another minute and half...

Her life doesn't matter. She is the vessel, they are … well whatever the vessel is trying to keep safe. Whatever gets stored up in the vessel. 

She'd slice herself in half, like King Solomon said – no wait that wasn't it – well she would anyway. She would slice herself in half if it would do any good, for any one them. For Bertie too. 

It wouldn't though. It's never been that easy. 

God – you ass, you blithering, slithering creep – there was no reason to take three out of four brothers (my own lovely brothers!) without even leaving the silly boy with a mother to his name (whoever she was, she hardly knew her – some pale slight girl, with blue eyes and light hair).

Girls manage just fine. The world is hard for girls. They have to toughen up. They learn. But boys... 

She doesn't mind if that half-wit, that moon-calf, that simpleton, blitherer, ditherer, that blot on the landscape, that blight on the crops, that knitting-Nancy nitwit of a nephew of hers is going to bed with his valet, or anyone else's valet for that matter.

It would be a relief, if anything. She'd always said that only a mother could love him, but she'd be happy to be proven wrong. 

(She loves him like a son)


	3. Bingo Little and Rosie M Banks: a juvenile, infantile stage of development

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bertie dines with Bingo and Mrs Bingo; a pleasant if rather perplexing evening.

“Bertie, I want to hear your opinion about this.”

“No you don't Rosie, Bertie's opinion is about as much use as a tea pot made out of toffee.”

“Richard! Bertie's our guest, you oughtn't to call him a chump.”

“But I didn't call him a chump, you did. I only said his opinion was as much use as a tea pot made out of toffee.”

“Bertie, listen, you know the novelist Florence Craye don't you?”

“He knows her all too well, Rosie! He almost married her. More than once.”

“Goodness! I really shouldn't have thought you'd have been her type at all, Bertie. You're not at all like the sort of person she writes about.”

“That's just as well, Rosie, for I've read the first chapter of _Spindrift_ and if he should have been the sort of person to go moping about the place and carrying on like those chaps, then he should have been blackballed from the Drones before the ballot had so much as opened.”

“I'm not taking to you, hubby-baby, I'm talking to Bertie. But Bertie, be honest now, don't you think I could write the sort of thing that she writes?”

“Don't answer her, Bertie! It's like this; my beloved wife, light of my life and all that, seems to think that she sells too many books. I don't know why she should think this, for I've always said the more the merrier. It's probably about her income tax or something. Anyway, she wants to make sure that whatever she writes next is so godawful that the only people who stock it will be pharmacists wanting to supply a reliable sleeping aid.”

“Don't listen to him, Bertie! My noble husband, who I honour and obey at all times even when he's being a fathead, thinks I cannot produce any works of literary merit.”

“Who said anything about literary merit, old girl! I said 'sleeping pill'.”

“Maybe I could write a scandalous book instead, the sort of book that can't be printed in England. What do you think about that idea Bertie?”

“He thinks you're a fathead, only he's too polite to say so. Whereas I think if you want to write the kind of book that can't be printed in England, then you might as well just take the time off and we could go away on holiday together Rosie – like I keep saying we should – since there's no point writing it in the first place if no-one gets to read it. ”

“No you're the fathead, husband-mine! If it couldn't be printed in England, then everyone should want to read it. Like _The Well of Loneliness_.”

“I didn't know you'd read that one Rosie!”

“Well I shouldn't have if it had been printed in England! Honoria Glossop leant me a copy, it's ever so boring but hers was marked up in at least a dozen places...”

“Is it as scandalous as everyone says it is?”

“Good heavens no! I used to have pashes on girls all the time at school. You grow out of it of course, after all, a grown woman can't have a girlfriend; it's axiomatic. It's a sort of juvenile, infantile stage of development – that's what all the modern doctors all say – the only shocking thing is not growing out of it.”

“Good heavens! I say, Bertie, it's different for chaps isn't it? I shouldn't think you ever had pashes on anyone at school?”

“Of course it's different for men, Richard, don't be vulgar.”

“I say, Bertie, that's just as well isn't it?”


	4. Madeline Bassett: the Lady of the Lake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: child sexual abuse 
> 
> I'm so sorry Madeline! Everyone says you're such an awful gawd-help-us, but I've always kind of liked you. Plus I'm sure I've made gorier analogies to flowers and stars and stuff in my own teenage notebooks. Mr Wodehouse leaves you engaged to a literal fascist who canonically has 'loved you since you were only yea high', which I take to it's horrible conclusions here, but I think you work it all out eventually. 
> 
> It's like on Facebook. The soppiest bullshit is always posted by those women who've suffered the most in life. 
> 
> Also fuck Unity Mitford. That's not you bae.

She never meant that they actually were God's daisy chains; she said they were like God's daisy chains.

She knows God doesn't make daisy chains.

When she pictures God she sees a sort blank black pool, spreading out in all directions.

~*~

Her wedding dress is a lake of lace, frothing and foaming out around all her.

Her wedding dress is a sea of silk, spurting and spraying all around her.

She is floating in the middle of it.

She is Lady Guinevere.

~*~

She did not dream of her wedding day as a little girl.

She dreamed of huge and snowy castles, of thickets of thorns, deep water, dragons with claws like garden scythes.

So many ways to make a wall.

And Mr Spode would take her on his knee.

~*~

But sometimes she would take down the photograph of her mother in her own wedding dress and it imagine it was her instead. Not marrying Daddy of course, but maybe marrying Mr Spode. One time she told him this and kissed his whiskers.

And Mr Spode had taken her upon his knee.

~*~

Mummy was an angel and wore a wedding dress every single day in heaven. It was she who had the task of plaiting the pretty stars and hanging them in the sky; making God's daisy chains for her little darling daughter down on earth to see.

Some little girls are angels up in heaven and other little girls are angels right here and now, said Mr Spode and took her on his knee.

~*~

She kept white mice and made them little dinner jackets, so they could be like tiny footmen. She played hop-along with bunny-lumpkins. She dug a hole in the rose garden and whispered a secret into it.

Mr Spode came out of the house to smoke. He asked if he could play too, but the game was quite spoiled. The secret she was burying was a secret he had told her.

Oh little secret, alive among the worms, I hope you hate it down there.

Maybe secrets become the bad fairies, she thought, for why else should such sad things exist in the world?

He kissed her forehead.

She shrank back.

You're a funny little girl, he said.

But she could not remember laughing.

~*~

Nursie said: did he ever interfere you, dearie? It won't be you I'm cross with if you tell me the truth, only you must tell nursie. If he hurt you down there we shall tell your Daddy.

 _Down where_?

Down where you make water from, dearie.

_Oh no, he never hurt me there._

Well mercy! That's alright then.

(He only showed me the ugly thing that makes boys different to girls and told me a secret and took me on his knee.)

~*~

You're looking all grown up, Mr Spode had told her.

He told her every single year he came to stay with Daddy that she was looking all grown up, until eventually it was true.

But he had been wrong about it the first few years. She knew he had been wrong.

~*~

Gussie was such a dear. He only ever tried to kiss her once and it turned out that was just because he was trying to get a spider out of her hair before it scared her.

He kept newts like she kept bunny-lumkins, only he never made straw hats for them or gave them tea on the lawn. Newts don't like that sort of thing Madeline, he told her. Well who cared what newts liked? Newts didn't like anything.

She liked to give her bunny-lumpkins tea.

~*~

It was Bertie who was the dearest dear.

He never tried to kiss her at all. She had known he would come for her, his white horse beneath her window. He would come and touching her only lightly, would carry her away. He was pale and fair and his face was hairless. When they were wed they would lie like a knight and his lady on their own sealed tomb. Their embrace would be the cool air between them.

She was quite certain he should not try to kiss her even then.

Bertie had loved her at a distance, while Mr Spode had taken her upon his knee.

~*~

The envelope is heavy. She knows what it contains. But while a white horse waits beneath her window, she will not open it.

~*~

Bunny was out all night. It was only because he had won the favour of the Fairy Queen by wriggling his nose and twitching his ears like a funny little goblin, that the Fairy Queen had given him her protection and stopped the naughty Mr Fox from gobbling him all up.

~*~

She must open the letter. The woman beside Bertie is not an ethereal maiden, of soft heart and softer skin. She looks like an actress. She has her arm around his shoulder.

Perhaps he is like other men after all.

Perhaps he takes her on his knee.

~*~

She writes to tell him please do not come to the wedding, for she is quite sure that she will see him there anyway.

A white horse is waiting beneath her window.

No she did not dream of her wedding day. She dreams of castles, towers, rivers, mountains, lakes and the ship that could take her away.

~*~

She knows he must come.  
The face at the back of the chuch; the white horse beneath the window.

Even at the altar she is sure she might still see him, he will come through the doors and call out a list of impediments, each one in a cool, clear voice.

He will swoop in and sweep her away.

They will vanish like sea foam.

Her white dress is a wave and she is travelling in its wake.

She leaves the church as a Lady.

~*~

They leave for France by the night train to Dover.

They board the ferry and the sea is smooth and huge and black all around them.

In their hotel room in Calais she lies on the bed like a knight's lady on his monument, pale and still and resolute.

Her husband's kisses are bristles. She wishes she could shrink away and vanish into the rose garden.

She thinks of Bunny's soft fur, the smoothness of a sealed tomb and the coolness of air.

His fingers poke and prod at her.

_Did he interfere with you dearie?_

Then everything stops.

She opens her eyes – when had she shut them and how so tightly? – and sees her husband standing at the foot of the bed. His ugly thing is hanging down between his legs, but it is different to how she had remembered it.

It flops and droops and looks like something even she would find difficult to pity.

He seems upset. He shakes and sobs and rages.

She watches him impassively, her eyes like a pair of pale, blue saucers.

“It's no good, my little Madeline. You are so pure. So perfect. And I am so loathsome”

She agrees.

He leaves the room and she does not see him again until the morning.

~*~

He tells her later on in the honeymoon that before the wedding he had spoken to a specialist in nervous disorders about his impotence, but that it had been no good.

She is only half listening. A pair of little birds are weaving a pretty bow high above the harbour. No, that's not it; they are untying the invisible strings which had been binding up the sky.

From then on they always have two rooms in every hotel.

Each night she locks the door to hers, but he never tries the handle.

Occasionally she notices her cami-knickers have gone missing from her laundry. In the first hotel she blamed the chambermaids, but by the third or fourth she guessed what had been happening.

She lies in white sheets, as white at her wedding dress. The sheets are cool, clear water. She is not Guinevere, she is the Lady of the Lake. In her hand she wields a heavy sword and if she wishes she may keep it or she may loan it to someone worthy, but she will never give it away.

From France they cross the border into Italy and travel southwards.

By day they visit scenic ruins and _palazzos_ full of beautiful paintings. She knows all the stories, apart from the ones about of the lives of the saints. But she soon starts to learn those too; the virgin martyrs who carry the tools of their execution as casually as if they were hockey sticks and picnic baskets. She likes them.

In the evenings she sits silently, dressed gorgeously and glimmering in the dusk like a fairy queen while her husband is entertained by prominent Italian fascists. She is admired, almost as much as he is patronised.

By night she is alone again and she likes this best of all.

On one occasion the entire table had laughed at her at dinner, when the conversation turned to castor oil and she had said that Nursie used to give it to her too.

Her husband had explained it afterwards and from that point on she began to keep a little list of every new thing she could think of that she hated about him. The list grew quickly.

She wasn't so foolish as to leave it lying about somewhere he could see it, although she came to realise after watching him eat asparagus that she shouldn't mind so terribly if he did.

When they climb the steps to the cupola of the Duomo in Florence, she entertains delicious thoughts of pushing him back down again.

In a gondola in Venice she imagines him contracting cholera and going green.

In Rome she is more fanciful and while visiting the Coliseum, imagines a lion eating him feet first, chewing him from knee, to thigh, to spine, until only his head remains; apoplectic and spluttering in the bloodied sand.

She's not stupid, she knows the difference between real life and fantasy. That doesn't mean she can't enjoy it.

~*~

Her friends had told her that the honeymoon was what made a girl into a woman.

They were not wrong, but they were right in the wrong way.

It was foolish to think that a man putting his thingy into you and poking it about, could make you anything other than what you'd always been.

A man was not that powerful when you really thought about it.

She knew exactly what she must do when she returned.

First, she should take her bunny-lumpkins from her father's house.

Second, she should go to stay with her friend Honoria for a while.

Honoria had never wanted her to marry Roderick in the first place and she is fairly certain that it was Honoria's father, Dr Glossop, who her husband had consulted before the wedding.

What she should do after that, she is not so certain.

She could ask for a divorce, or as the case might be an annulment.

Did they have annulments in her own country, or was that only in the Catholic faith?

She was rather interested in converting. God was still a blank black pool, but those martyrs who just rolled their eyes when the executioner started going on and on and on about some old Roman thing or other, were really rather jolly.

But perhaps she would simply tell Roderick that they were to live separately.

She wouldn't even mind it if he wanted to keep some of her cami-knickers for old time's sake.

Her father would be cross, of course.

It wouldn't matter.

Whatever happened, there would still be stars at night and the stars would always be God's daisy chains.


	5. Rocky Rockmeteller Todd: what's not to like about it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They've always rubbed along together pretty well on previous occasions, only Bertie has his own personal reasons for wanting to keep his appointment with Rocky on the down low. 
> 
> While Jeeves thinks that Bertie is attending the wedding of Madeline Bassett and Lord Sidcup aka Spode, he is in fact catching up with the American poet and Walt Whitman fan Rocky Rockmeteller Todd, who has a thing or two to tell Bertie about his (ahem) butler.

The first time I made a pass at him, he almost jumped out of his skin.

I'd invited him down to my place in Long Island for a few days, feeling pretty certain we were on the same page about what I meant about making our own entertainment while he was there.

“Gee, I'm really sorry!” I said, when he'd recovered slightly, “I thought all you English gents went in for that sort of thing.”

“I say,” he said, “Well... I mean to say, what.... I mean, what I mean is... well it's not... but what on earth gave you that impression anyway?”

“Oh I don't know,” I said and I guess I'd never really thought about it, “It's probably just the way you guys talk or something. Are you sure you don't like it? I mean, if you've never tried it how can you know?”

So then he goes redder than a beet.

I mean; I'm in the poetry business so it pays to get creative with the similes and all the rest of that junk, but it this case I'd say a beet just about covered it.

“It's not that... dash it... I mean to say, it's not that I _haven't_.”

“OK. So you've tried it and you don't like it. I can't see what's not like about it myself, but it takes all kinds to make a world” I said amiably, because I really do believe that's the case. Each to their own and let's leave it at that.

Then he sort of lunges at me face first. I'm caught off guard, so it's not the most erotic of clinches, but it's a turnabout from where I'd thought the night was going.

“So you do like it!” I said cheerfully, (I mean, after all, what's not to like?) “What was the problem before then?”

Then it occurs to me; the light bulb pops up above my head... you see, that one was a metaphor.

“That butler guy of yours is the jealous type, huh? I had a pal like that once. I told him, 'sorry buddy but if it was married life I wanted I'd have stayed back West'. He was pretty good about it after that.”

It was the wrong thing to say, because the beet impression is back on again and performing its encore.

He actually spluttered. I mean I like the guy a lot, but it was kind of corny.

“Jeeves is my valet!”

Well, I'm pretty sure he was wrong about that since a valet is the guy who parks the car and you say it like 'ballet'. What Bertie said was more like 'mallet' and Jeeves doesn't just park the car, he opens the door to the apartment and brings the drinks out on a little tray too.

But like I say, I'm a tolerant sort of chap so I let it sit.

“Well whatever he is, if he doesn't like you messing around on him with other guys there's no reason why you need to tell him. He knows you're here this weekend, he can probably figure it out.”

“He's not my... lover!” Bertie said in a sort of strangled hissing voice, kind of like if you were putting the frighteners on a snake.

“Well then, who gives a goddamn what he thinks!”

I guess he agreed because after that we had a pretty good visit after all. I saw him quite a few times after that.

I mean, it wasn't exactly a Romeo and Juliet thing, but I'm guessing the Two Gentlemen of Verona had a lot of fun in their own way... whoever the hell they were. I' admit I'm not so hot on the Shakespeare stuff myself, I've always been something more in a Walt Whitman sort of line. For you Brits out there, he's like Shakespeare for us Americans but kind of snappier.

And anyway, at least this way no-one was going to have to die at the end.

After he went back to London, we kept in touch. So when I was asked to speak at one of those little British colleges with the green lawns in Oxfordshire and some other places in, I actually said yes.

Normally I wouldn't want the hassle, but my Aunt Isabel – whose health has never been better by the way, thanks for asking – was making dark noises about coming all the way from Illinois to see my secluded little artist's cabin. Once she'd settled in a place she wasn't the sort to be dislodged so easily. Last time it took God Himself to get her to go home and leave me in peace.

Well, God and that guy Jeeves.

Plus my agent had told me that on the crossing from New York I could sleep all morning in my state room and then find a deck chair to lie in for the afternoons.

I've always had a sort of thing for sailors, so there was that too, but I admit I was looking forward to seeing old Bertie again.

Once he warms up a bit, he's pretty good fun between the sheets.

Kind of an early riser though.

It was actually pretty lucky. Just before I was scheduled to go back to New York, Bertie was supposed to be a guest at some big society wedding, but he dropped out of it and came to stay with me in my hotel in London for the night.

“Jeeves doesn't know I'm here,” he said, as we sat in the hotel bar.

I didn't think this was such big news. Lots of people probably didn't know he was there. I mean, why would they?

“He still jealous, huh?” I said, wanting to sound sympathetic. Jealously has never made much sense to me.

“He and I are not... oh never mind. Jeeves is normal.”

“Who ever said he wasn't?” I replied, but actually he'd never seemed that normal to me. Those thrusting dynamic types – who know all there is to know about 6.00am and wear pants with creases you could cut your finger on – have always seemed like a different species in my opinion.

“Anyway,” I continued, because I knew what Bertie was getting at, even if I kind of resented it, “If you mean he's not a fag, I happen to know you're wrong about that.”

“Stop talking rot, Rocky” said Bertie, but I didn't mind about that. My editor's said things to me on a pleasant Tuesday afternoon in spring, that would curl a longshoreman's hair and have him reaching for a rosary.

“It's not rot. My friend Clarence told me he'd had him in the Astor Bar.”

I let that sink in.

If you'd asked me, Bertie was looking rather pale at this point. Quite a contrast to his last season's popular turn as an impersonator of beets. He's versatile, I'll say that for him.

“It's true,” I said, “He said picked him up there one time, back when your man Jeeves was on the town every night gathering up material for those letters I used to have to write to my Aunt Isabel. Obviously, he never included that in those notes he used to send me. So he's just like us. I don't know why you thought he wasn't. I could have told you that anyway. I can always tell. Can't you?”

I guess that he couldn't. But in fairness to him, it must be harder for guys over here, since everyone in this country talks like that.

“You're wrong,” said Bertie quietly and actually sounding kind of angry, holding onto his drink like a life-raft or like it was about to fly off out the window, “Your friend Clarence – whoever he dashed well is – is wrong. It must have someone else who looked like him.”

“Maybe,” I admitted, because after all it wasn't me that picked him up, “Well whoever the guy was, Clarence said he was a damned good lay. You should ask him about it sometime.”

“I can't; I've never met the blighter,” said Bertie acerbically, which means like his drink had turned to vinegar. I thought he was being kind of obtuse and so told him as much.

“Not Clarence, you dolt; you should ask Jeeves.”

“I am not going to ask him about it, Rocky.”

“Well based off of what Clarence said, it's your loss. Do you want to go upstairs?”

We did and it was fun, but in the afternoon when I woke up Bertie had left.

He always was an early riser.

Probably gets it spending all his time hanging around with that butler of his.


End file.
